Page:A record of European armour and arms through seven centuries (Volume 2).djvu/81

We have remarked on an earlier page that this very completely visored salade with the Celata form of skull-piece was made in countries other than Italy. The Wallace Collection contains three of German origin, one of which we will illustrate; while on certain of the magnificent suits in the Imperial Armoury of Vienna may be seen such head-pieces, the work of noted German armourers. Of the Wallace helmets of this type No. 82 (Fig. 390) is the most typically German. The skull-piece is flattened, and has a low comb of rectangular section, with a hollow groove running down the centre. On either side are four radiating rows of fluting. The tail-piece is composed of three plates. The hinged visor, which is attached by conical-headed rivets, contains oblong apertures forming the ocularia, below which are pierced and embossed ridges and two series of holes for ventilation. This salade was purchased by the Comte de Nieuwerkerke from the citadel of Seragavow. The other two salades of this type in the Wallace Collection are Nos. 79 and 87, both more or less of the same form and of the same nationality of origin.

Fig. 390. Salade

North Italian type, but of German make, about 1500 No. 82, Wallace Collection

Putting aside the Coventry example (Fig. 365 a and b) and the small archer's salade (Fig. 377), the type of salade head-piece which was worn in England in the latter part of the XVth century, and which may be looked upon as of English make, appears to be a head-piece which is a mixture of the Italian and "tailed" types, inclining perhaps rather to the former. One can only judge what the English made salades may have been like by referring to those very few specimens to be seen in English churches, where they are in some cases placed above tombs dating nearly two generations later than the make of the salades. True, two of the examples we illustrate (Figs. 391 and 392) have had mesails and chin-pieces added in the XVIth century; but none the less the skull-pieces are XVth century work, and as such must have represented the ordinary type of English made salade common in this country toward the close of that century. These head-pieces were then going rapidly out of fashion; so that probably they were bought up as out-of-date helmets by the funeral furnishers of the time to be adapted as one sees them for heraldic purposes, much after the manner they treated the Italian armet at a later period. The first example (Fig. 391) appears to be the earliest of the three. It is in Harefield Church, Middlesex. The skull-